Foxconn Defends Internships After Reports of Forced Work

The company responded to reports in China Daily and Beijing News that vocational students in the eastern province of Jiangsu were told they had to work at a local Foxconn plant in order to receive academic credits. Photographer: Thomas Lee/Bloomberg

Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Foxconn Technology Group said its
interns in China are free to leave the program at any time after
local newspapers reported that students from vocational schools
were forced to make USB cables for Apple Inc.’s new iPhone.

A recent audit of three Foxconn facilities in China carried
out by the Fair Labor Association found no evidence that any
interns were pressured to participate, Foxconn said in an e-mailed statement today.

The company responded to reports in China Daily and Beijing
News that vocational students in the eastern province of Jiangsu
were told they had to work at a local Foxconn plant in order to
receive academic credits. The interns earned a basic salary of
1,550 yuan ($244) a month and had to work overtime if they
didn’t finish their daily tasks, China Daily reported, citing
students it didn’t identify with full names.

A woman identified as Wang Yan said she couldn’t understand
why her 19-year-old daughter, who is majoring in preschool
education, was sent to produce USB cables, China Daily reported.
The newspaper cited the daughter, identified only as Song, as
saying she couldn’t get the credits needed to graduate if she
refused the internship.

Short Staffed

Foxconn invested more than $210 million to establish new
production lines for Apple components in the city of Huai’an,
the China Daily reported. Now the plant is “short-staffed” as
it works to fill orders related to Apple’s new handset, the
newspaper reported, citing a Foxconn official it didn’t
identify.

Apple on Sept. 12 will hold a product event in San
Francisco, where it’s expected to unveil a redesigned iPhone.

Carolyn Wu, a Beijing-based spokeswoman for Apple, didn’t
immediately return calls seeking comment. A news department
official for the Huai’an city government, declining to give her
name, said she wasn’t able to comment.

Foxconn, which also makes Apple’s iPad, has internship
programs ranging from one to six months in length with “a
number of” vocational schools in China, the company said in the
e-mailed statement.

“Students are free to leave the internship program at any
time,” Foxconn said, adding that the interns represent an
average of 2.7 percent of its China workers.

The Beijing News cited the Huai’an government as saying in
a statement that all internships organized by vocational schools
must be based on the willingness of students, and the schools
should immediately rectify any violations. All students who
didn’t want to work at the Foxconn plant returned to their
schools, the government was cited as saying.

The newspapers didn’t say when the students worked at the
factory.

Labor Policies

Calls to Huai’an Broadcasting and Television University and
Jiangsu Food Science College, identified by the Beijing News as
having sent interns to Foxconn’s plant, went unanswered today. A
man who answered the main line at Jiangsu Polytechnic of Finance
and Economics, who declined to give his name, said students
returned to the school a day after the internship started.

Foxconn’s labor policies have been the subject of past
criticism. A Fair Labor Association audit of Foxconn plants
working for Apple in March found “serious and pressing”
violations of Chinese labor laws, prompting the biggest maker of
Apple devices to pledge to cut working hours and give employees
more oversight. Assessors found cases of employees working
longer hours and more days in a row than allowed by FLA
standards and Chinese law.

The commitment to cut worker hours while keeping pay the
same means Foxconn will need to recruit “tens of thousands of
extra workers” in the next year, the FLA said in the March
report. The association said last month that Foxconn was ahead
of schedule to improve conditions, while work hours exceeded
targets and legal mandates.